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Conference anti-harassment/Responding to reports
This page describes how to respond to reports of conference harassment. Having a policy The key to responding to conference harassment is having a policy that forbids harassment. See the Conference anti-harassment pages for a sample policy and implementation resources, particularly, Conference anti-harassment/Policy resources for information about publicizing your policy, and educating event attendees. Also prepare a list of emergency resources such as emergency services contact details and mental health and sexual assault hotlines. Incidents may be reported under the harassment policy that the conference staff are not equipped to deal with. Receiving harassment reports See also Conference anti-harassment/Duty officer If someone reports harassment to conference staff, ask them for a written account of what happened. This should be kept confidential to as small a group as reasonably possible, and could be anonymised by the receiving person before distribution to the closed group. If conference staff receive a verbal report, they should themselves write down what they were told as soon as they can, in case they don't get anything better. If the following information is not volunteered in the written or verbal report, ask for it/include it, but do not pressure them. * Identifying information (name/badge number) of the participant providing the harassing * The behavior that was in violation * The approximate time of the behavior (if different than the time the report was made) * The circumstances surrounding the incident * Other people involved in the incident * guideline here Initial response to harassment reports Threats to physical wellbeing Most harassment complaints aren't of this nature, but if someone reports that an attendee has committed or is threatening violence towards another attendee, or other safety issues: *if there is any general threat to attendees or the safety of anyone including conference staff is in doubt, summon security or police. *offer the victim a private place to sit *ask "is there a friend or trusted person who you would like to be with you?" (if so, arrange for someone to fetch this person) *ask them "how can I help?" *if everyone is safe, offer the victim your assistance in summoning medical or police help, but do not insist *provide them with your list of emergency contacts if they need help later Reports of harassment that were widely witnessed These include things like harassing content in conference talks, or harassment that took place in a crowded space. Simply say "thanks this sounds like a breach of our anti-harassment policy, I am going to convene a meeting of a small group of people and figure out what our response will be." Reports of more private harassment Offer the reporter/victim a chance to decide if any further action is taken: "OK, this sounds like a breach of our anti-harassment policy, if you're OK with it I am going to convene a meeting of a small group of people and figure out what our response will be." Pause, and see if they say they do not want this. Otherwise, go ahead. Do not: *make overt suggestions that they withdraw the complaint, this suggests that you want them to do so, and is therefore coercive *ask for their advice on how to deal with the complaint: this is the staff's responsibility *offer them input into penalties: this is the staff's responsibility Staff action in response to harassment reports You should aim to take action as soon as reasonably possible. During the event, a response within the next half-day is usually an appropriate timeframe. After the event you may need more time to gather sufficient decision makers, but ideally responding within the same week or sooner is good. Meeting Available staff should meet as soon as possible after a report to discuss: #what happened? #are we doing anything about it? #who is doing those things? #when are they doing them? Neither the complainant nor the alleged harasser should attend. (If the event was very widely witnessed, such as a harassing talk, this may be an exception to this guideline.) Communicate with the alleged harasser about the complaint As soon as possible, either before or during the above meeting, let the alleged harasser know that there is a complaint about them, let them tell someone their side of the story and that person takes it into the meeting. Communicate with the harasser about the penalty As soon as possible after that meeting, let the harasser know what action is being taken. Give them a place to appeal to if there is one, but in the meantime the action stands. "If you'd like to discuss this further, please contact XYZ, but in the meantime, you must " Possible sanctions Your first principle should be the safety of your community members from harassment and you should evaluate sanctions in light of whether they provide the safety needed. You and your event are the only people who can judge appropriate sanctions in your community based on the nature of the incident and the responses of the people involved, but some possibilities are: *requiring that the harasser to avoid any interaction with their victim for the remainder of the event *ending a talk that violates the policy early *not publishing the video or slides of a talk that violated the policy *not allowing a speaker who violated the policy to give (further) talks at the event *immediately ending any event volunteer responsibilities and privileges the harasser holds *requiring that the harasser not volunteer in future (either indefinitely or for a certain time period) *requiring that the harasser immediately leave the event and not return *banning the harasser from future events (either indefinitely or for a certain time period) *removing a harasser from membership of relevant organizations *publishing an account of the harassment and calling for the resignation of the harasser from their responsibilities (usually pursued by people without formal authority: may be called for if the harasser is the event leader, or refuses to stand aside from the conflict of interest, or similar, typically event staff have sufficient governing rights over their space that this isn't as useful) Communicating with your community Principles Your community may need to see the policy enforced because: *you want to be transparent to your community and not have secret policies sanctions that you aren't accountable for *the actions of the harasser, or reports of multiple harassment, show that your policy may not be well understood *you wish to reassure people that you are serious about anti-harassment Level of detail When discussing the incident with others, it is good to keep the individuals anonymous, generally. (An exception may be if the harasser is very central to the community, such as a core conference staffer,) However, it is useful to: *offer some idea of the nature of the incident eg "a sexual slide was shown in a talk" or "an attendee physically threatened another attendee" or "an attendee repeatedly harassed another attendee despite multiple requests to cease" or whatever. *briefly mention the sanction *(briefly! neutrally!) convey any apologies from the harasser, especially if they were backed by actions, for example "the attendee/speaker/staffer has agreed that their actions were inappropriate and has voluntarily left the conference" This helps your community understand the reality of the policy: how and when it gets enforced. Feedback The community should be offered the chance to give feedback on your policy and actions. When discussing the incident. always offer an avenue for feedback: this could be verbally to conference staff, email, phone, etc. One mechanism is usually fine if it's accessible to everyone. You will probably prefer that the feedback be private between an individual attendee and conference staff: discussions of harassment incidents on geeky public mailing lists and similar often end up in lengthy (and sometimes harassing!) disputes about the philosophical validity of the notion of harassment. Informing attendees If the event has been dealt with at the conference, it may be appropriate for the conference to make a short announcement at the next plenary, something like: : " happened. This was a violation of our policy. We apologise for this. We have taken . This is a good time for all attendees to review our policy at . If anyone would like to discuss this further they can ." And then move on with the program. Dealing with upset attendees People may be upset and wish to express their concerns to conference staff. Conference staff should be in "making the person feel heard" mode, it's important not to cross into education mode. Hear them out, thank them for their thoughts. If an attendee are upset and a staff member agrees that a wrong was done to them, it helps a lot to just say simply "I'm so sorry." (Rather than "but we tried really hard" or "no one told us" or etc, even if that was true. "I'm so sorry" goes a long way to defusing many people's anger.) Whether or not a staffer agree that a wrong was done to them them, they should be armed with an authority they can appeal to if talking wasn't enough. "Please email our conference director." "Please email our committee." etc. Public response Some incidents of harassment will need a public response after the conference in order to protect the reputation of your awesome, friendly, professional conference. Be prepared and willing to distance your conference from actions of participants that reflect badly on your conference, and to defend your action or inaction in response. Nobody likes being the bad guy, but even fewer people like going to a conference when the organizers seem to condone bad behavior, whether the reputation is for punishing the people reporting it, ignoring it, or enforcing an existing policy unevenly (someone with no connections getting the harshest possible penalty, someone with intimate connections to the organizers getting off lighter than the stated policy). Timing is important. Try to respond quickly to harassment incidents. A late response looks a lot like no response at all and can harm your conference's reputation and future attendance. A simple and relatively uncontroversial response with few legal concerns is to issue a general statement about the kind of behavior involved. "$CONFERENCE does not condone $BEHAVIOR. $BEHAVIOR violates the anti-harassment policy of $CONFERENCE, which specifies that participants engaging in $BEHAVIOR will be expelled from the conference. We take harassment seriously and respond to reports of it quickly and firmly." Evaluation After you have had a chance to observe how the anti-harassment policy works in the real situations presented by your conference, you may wish to change the policy to better address them. Did anything unforseen happen that there should be a rule about? Sometimes an unacceptable behavior does not warrant a whole new rule, but should be listed as a specific example of unacceptable behavior under an existing rule. For consistency, it is wise to deal with situations that came up at this year's conference under this year's rules, and only apply any changes going forward to the next conference.